Everything Cat

Felis catus, caught here between light and shadow, posing in the fading sun of this last day of an arbitrary calendar year.

Momentarily content and mindlessly watchful, she is, gorgeously, everything cat.

Rain On!

I got a *very* cool present this holiday season: an "unbreakable" umbrella.

For those of us with various weapons training, anything we happen to have in hand we think of as a weapon, at least under the right circumstances. Umbrellas -- kind of obvious that way. Except, of course, that most of them are kind flimsy. To quote one reviewer, "Whacking someone with a regular cheap umbrella will leave a welt and a very angry opponent, and the umbrella will be destroyed."

Not so this one. Heck, you can stand on it. In this video a fellow does just that before cutting in half a watermelon.

Because, you know, sometimes you don't have a knife handy. Ha ha.

No, seriously, this is tres cool. A quality umbrella -- that solid *thup* sound it makes when opening -- which, should you need to whack a watermelon (or punching bag) really hard can stand up to the task.

Lifetime warranty, of course.

My lifetime. Natch.

The Christ Story

I need some help here with the Christ thing. Maybe one of you can explain to me how this works.

I have a casual understanding of the Christ story, an understanding that comes from talking to Christian friends and reading the bible, so there is a lot I don't get.

It being the season I've lately been listening to a lot of Christmas carols, and in the course of paying attention to the lyrics, I keep coming back to a few things that I don't quite understand.

The star thing. Did everyone really know this baby was the special lord guy when he was born? Or did the star-means-Christ-is-born knowledge arrive after the fact in a revisionist sort of way?  Because if everyone knew that Christ was this powerful guy in baby form then it would seem to me that not only his birth but his whole upbringing would have been fraught with all kinds of danger and close calls and we'd hear lots of stories about how he barely escaped death some ten or twenty times a day, and I don't hear about that.

Also, I seem to recall from some story somewhere that Jesus' parents had other children. If his parents knew he was this special from the start, wouldn't he know, too? Surely his siblings would have figured it out, too and wouldn't that have put some strain on the family dynamics? "Your brother's special, sweetie, and while we love you all, we love him -- differently. By the way, don't drink that water after he's handled it and for sure no eating those crackers he's touched."

Again, I'm sure there's plenty I don't understand.  Anyone want to help me make sense of this?

Kate

I became a Kate Bornstein fan this week.  I didn't mean to. I wasn't planning to. There was just this talk at Babeland, which if you live in Seattle and you're a babe you have to visit, so I was in the neighborhood...

She was fabulous, just fabulous.  In the ballgame of public speaking she hit it into the next ballpark. (Sorry.  Never was that good at sports metaphors.)

People laughed, cried, and wanted more.

Her basic message: life is worth living, and you can make it better, and here's how.  And one more thing to anyone who wants it: a get out of Hell free card. Just don't be mean.

Nicely done, Kate.

Want a taste?  Try this.

"Mutt"

I'm still immature enough that when someone makes my point for me I jump up and down and say hey, cool, I was making that point years ago!

Decades, actually.  When I was a snotty young brat, I considered the common demographic question of "race" and thoughtfully and stubbornly started answering "mutt".

Because, like most people, I'm a bit of a mix. Besides what the parents say, there are always the Family Secrets. Statistically speaking, we are unlikely to be strictly the descendants of those who claim us.

Life just ain't as tidy as the forms would have us believe. And it mattered to me, way back when, despite the raised eyebrows, to make that point.  Mutt.

Turns out gender isn't always tidy, either. When I read this here discussion of the ambiguities of gender, which also mentions race, I got all happy and started jumping up and down. That's my point! Yeah!

Woof!

Ooo, Snow!

I love the way my mind works. Put me in a warm, toasty room and show me a snowstorm outside through the window and my puppy-like mind says "Ooo, snow, fun! Walk! Walk!"

Wait, I say. You know it's cold out there? I mean, really really cold?

"Ooo, snow! Walk, walk!" The puppy-mind whines eagerly.

Look, I say, see how the snow's not falling gently, but cutting sideways with the wind?

"Walk-walk-walk!"

I know where this will end. It won't shut up about how much fun it will be outside. Or would be if I would just let us go out-out-out. Out where it's not merely below freezing but the wind is enthusiastically cutting delicate skin with knifetips of ice.

It's snowing, slippery, and the wind is biting. Sensible people are inside, toasting themselves in the bliss of modern heaters.

Those without puppies in their heads, anyway.

I know I'll lose this fight, so I wrap up as best I can, pull on boots and out we go, my puppy-mind and me. Outside, it's dark. The cold quickly sucks away illusions of warm-and-safe. We walk down a quiet, icy cityscape that suddenly seems odd and wild.

"Ooo, snow!" says my puppy-brain.

Then, a few minutes later: "Ooo, cold!"

And then: "Can we go back now?"

Yeah, that's what I thought. But at least the whining will stop for a while.

The Myth of Self-Defense

I'm pissed again. This is why I don't attend martial arts classes any more, why my answer to "what martial arts have you done?" is "oh, this and that."

Because most martial arts talk is posturing and pretense and ego, not much to do with effective self-defense. Which I do care about.

I'm not going off on a rant how most martial arts practices have little or nothing to do with self-defense, or how most MA teachers haven't a clue how little they know about what they think they're teaching. Heck, I'm barely going to touch on how much worse than useless most "women's self-defense" training is. All that would take a book. This one is a good start.


But I will say this: if someone you care about really needs self-defense, give them a few critical basics:

1. No matter how much experience they say they have, your teacher can be oh-so wrong. They don't know what you know about your body, your mind, or your self defense situation. And gosh, if they aren't listening to you, they know even less.

2. Anyone who won't talk to you about why they teach specific moves, who can't answer "but why not just walk away?", does not know what they are doing.

3. Belts don't matter. Martial arts lineages don't matter. The name of the school doesn't matter. All those weapons on the wall? The big, lovely Japanese kanji? Irrelevant. Absolutely irrelevant.

4. You don't need lots of fancy moves. More techniques isn't the answer. You need one move -- just one -- that works. Okay, maybe two. Listen: if it's hard to do when you're calm, on flat ground, in a well-lit room, how hard will it be to do in the rain, on slippery pavement in the dark? Those moves should be simple.

If you want a good teacher, find someone who doesn't need to convince you that they're a good teacher. Find someone who teaches out of their garage. Find someone who, when you learn a bunch of moves, won't give you a belt.

And to the guy who tried to teach me women's self-defense tonight, who is probably nearly as annoyed as I am by the experience, who thinks pain and damage are the same thing, who told me that if I raise my arm over my head I'll be taller than my attacker:

I hope you find out how how little you know before you teach this stuff to any other woman who might actually need to use it. But I bet you won't.

We don't really live in a very violent place or time. Most of the women who learn these "self-defense" practices will never need them. I console myself with that.

And yet, somehow, I'm still pissed.

Making Relationships Last

Do everything else first. Just kidding.

I have an answer to the age-old question of making relationships last. It's really quite simple. Two guidelines:

1. Hear what you want to hear.

2. Anything else is small stuff. Ignore it.

You have to get past the idea of right and wrong. Communication in relationships is not about right and wrong and it sure isn't about peace, love and understanding. As Mr. Shaw says, "The problem with communication is the illusion that it has occurred."

We don't communicate. We think we have, and that's all very well and good, but mostly we haven't. Since we're hallucinating about communicating anyway, let's hallucinate in a way that makes things work better. Makes sense, right?

A bit more detail:

Hear what you want to hear. This is easier than it sounds, since most people use lots of words when they talk and. You're smart -- just pick out the words that work best for you. Once you practice this a bit, it becomes surprisingly easy.

Ignore the small stuff. People get into fights because they think something matters a lot, but the fight is almost never about the subject in front of you. No, it's about some deeper principle or universal injustice. Sure, fight for fun if you want to, but don't fight the wrong battle. And when it comes to relationships, it's almost always the wrong battle. The actual thing in front of you? Small. Inconsequential. Ignore it.

There you have it. Go on, try these two guidelines. If in 20 years you're not still together with whoever, well. I'll give you your money back. Heck, I might even admit I was wrong.

Down and Dirty

Plenty of down, but day one of the Miller's weekend seminar, loosly dubbed "Violence Dynamics", wasn't all that dirty. Day two made up for the clean mats and white walls with ground fighting in a dirty cement warehouse and full-contact conflict scenarios.

The things I do for fun!

No sense in wrestling words around to describe it if I can find someone else to say it better. Brent writes about the workshop here.

My Name in Print! Mmmmm!

I had another tango article accepted recently for publication in a journal. I got nuthin' but good things to say about being published. It's the cat's whiskers and the cat. Attached to each other!

I don't know why, but it didn't occur to me to mention it here. (In my blog. Didn't occur to me. Talk to myself often? Quiet, you.) As it happens, I recently (and cleverly) put together a mailing list. (Thank you, Yahoo, and while I'm here, why did Google drop the ball on Google groups? Yahoo groups is nothing to brag about, but Google is worse. Color me stunned -- doing groups right is neither hard nor subtle. But I digress.)

If you happen to be among my three regular readers who aren't yet on my publications announcement mailing list and want to be, drop me a note, or post in the comments, and your wish shall be granted.

My name in print. Mmmmm.

Rocks and Soap

I have a confession to make. Well, technically, two. And not so much a confession as a discovery.

I collect rocks.

I discovered this while unpacking my things. Things, with a capital "T". Among my various things I found I was unpacking rocks. Small rocks, big rocks. White and black. Pretty and plain. All, apparently, with some fair significance.

I know they have significance because I distinctly remember, two moves ago, giving away a whole bunch of them to friends -- black and white, pretty and plain -- and resolving to keep only those few lovelies had lots of special significance. That were important. That were especially -- well, special.

Despite this, somehow, I have in my possession a bunch of rocks. A nice, healthy collection.

For a moment I consider getting rid of some of them, these special (and perhaps not so special) rocks. A certain reluctance wells up inside me. One might even go so far as to say a "hell, no! These are mine."

I confess: I am helpless in the face of these lovelies. My rocks. My collection.

I don't think I really need to explain about the soap.

Hacker Humor

As a writer and devoted documenter-of-my-code, I found these laugh-out-loud hilarious.  Heck, maybe this even qualifies as a geek test. You read it and tell me, k?

Top funny source code comments

And if you've got more, tell me. (Maybe that's the real test, wanting more.)

Annoyed Much?

To be an upstanding citizen in Washington state means putting up with the most impressive and costly civic crap I've ever seen.  Waiting times, permits, fees, lines and other bureaucratic goo so sticky that it's a caricature of government.

Pretend, for a moment, you are getting your driver's license. In Oregon, you walk in to the DMV and 20 minutes later you've got your card. You walk out, you do something useful.

Here in the good old state of waah, 3 hour waits are not uncommon.

Three HOURS?!

Because, of course, citizen time isn't important.

Not long ago, I took the motorcycle class to get my endorsement.  I figured it was the right thing to do. It was inconvenient, expensive, and hard work, but I did it. When it's all over the instructor sez: "Take this card to a Licensing Office and get your endorsement."

That means go to a Licensing Office, and stand in line for your driver's license.  Last time I did that it was indeed three hours.

Ever wonder why Washington ID photo faces are tense and annoyed?

Fun and a Dome

I got to do some very cool things last weekend. I got to sit at an outdoor fire under the stars, I got to listen to people speaking their truth through fear, and I got to dance on the knife-edge of my own identity.

And I got to hang out in this exceedingly cool dome.

It was massive amounts of fun.

Sexist Humor — Friendly Fire

Or... How to ask for a raise if you're just a gyrl.  I enjoyed a laugh this morning with this advice from Women's Day on how to ask for a raise: wash it. Wash it good.